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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Perfect Peace

"He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in Him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord!" - Isaiah 26:3

Hello dear reader.

It's been too long.

Somehow I got behind on blogging, and then I kept waiting for the perfect post to mark my reentry into the blogosphere. And the pressure got bigger and bigger and bigger until I finally gave up because I figured there was no post that could be good enough to make up for all the posts I hadn't written. But I realized recently that I need writing in my life. Writing makes sense of the chaos around me most of the time and turns all my creative energy into something good when it seems like all my energy is going into sinking ships. Know what I'm talking about?

Anyways, I've just decided that I have to begin somewhere and that somewhere is here. This verse. Perfect peace.

I love that promise. Peace is not a word that comes across my lips very often nor an emotion that I feel very frequently. Most of the time peace seems rather elusive. Life in the English Language School is perpetual chaos. In fact, at our recent team building time for my staff, we realized that we were most successful at team work in the utter chaos of everyone yelling at each other as opposed to quiet, constructive planning. Our new slogan has become "Unity through chaos!" My co-leader described it perfectly the other day when she said, "It feels like I have 40 kids!" Yep, that pretty much describes the ELS - a zoo of 40 crazy grown-up kids fumbling their way through cultural misunderstandings and language barriers and social faux pas. My role is something of a cross between a parent, a counselor, a teacher, a referee and a zoo keeper.

So yeah, peace is not something I'm really familiar with.

So when I stumbled over this translation of this familiar verse, it really stuck with me - especially the second part: "whose thoughts turn often to the Lord."

Can I confess something? Most of the time when all hell breaks loose at work (which is most days) my thoughts don't often turn to the Lord. They usually turn to Facebook (for a 10 second reprieve) which then leads me to Instagram which leads usually to thoughts about food and then to my dinner plans and then to when I will get to go out and eat some good food and then to this weekend and then to what is standing in between me and this weekend which is the pile of paperwork in front of me and then to the green nail polish on my hand that is holding the paper and the nail polish that is chipping and then to the squeaky door that no one has fixed yet which keeps interrupting my thoughts and then to why no one ever fixes anything around here and to the sorry state of affairs at work and the general downfall of the world we live in. The end.

You get the point.

But I was thinking today what it might be like if instead of allowing my mind to jump to useless stuff around me, I turned my thoughts toward the Lord. Often.

I'm not sure what that would look like just yet, but I'm pretty sure that chipping nail polish and next weekend's dinner plans aren't included. So I've resolved to give it a try. Perfect peace sounds pretty good. If instragram or my nails have to take a hit for the sake of a little peace, I'm willing to give it a go. What about you, dear reader?

And yes, I do indeed have green nail polish, just in case you were wondering.

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